trying to get all this to work out

What a massive and magnificent community we have!

I remember about ten years ago we had a staff meeting and I expressed that we needed to try and work into the general direction of having a hundred people managing all this instead of about a dozen.  We needed to grow.  And here we are.  

Within that 10 years, I bought land and started a community.  We had 9 kickstarters.  We added the digital market, the PIE program, self-serve advertising.  We switched to doing our own email stuff, and we have arranged for oodles of freebies for our peeps.  We've grown from about 50 forums to several hundred.   We had about 20,000 threads and now we have about 150,000.  

I'm an author now!


So much magnificent, glorious, wonderful stuff!


I created these forums 15 years ago. In the spring - so I guess 15+ years.  It has been one long bumbling, stumbling, dancy festival of work to get it started and then to get it to grow.  All sorts of wack-a-doodle things have been tried in the feeble attempt to infect more brains with permaculture.  At the same time, there was a lot of negativity to permaculture (most of which from people calling themselves permaculture enthusiasts), so we worked to create an environment that would encourage permaculture rather than discourage.  A safe place for gentle souls to share.

And it has grown and grown.

I keep going out into the wilds of the internet to say "come on out to the forums at permies.com ..."   ...  oops ...  the wilds of the internet can be an unkind place ...   I think I need to spend more time here, where it is nice.  


I started this thread to complain about some really harsh stuff I have seen recently, but I thought I would start off with a bit of balance about good stuff.  And now that I've written about good stuff, the bad stuff ...  it seems like the bad stuff is smaller if it doesn't get any further air time.    



When I was 21 I had a crush.  After months of suffering I screwed up the courage to ask her out.  After all, the worst that could happen is that she could say "no."   Turns out that she could say "no" while laughing.  Laughing hard.  And sharing this laugh with her friends.  And strangers.   For days.   Apparently, not a match.  So extremely not a match that it is very comical - worthy of a big laugh for lots of people.  It would seem that her days were a bit empty and I provided her with a healthy dollup of entertainment.  Almost identical to the wilds of the internet.  Around that same time, I did lots of things.  My mind is constantly full of projects.  And while that plan crashed and burned (leaving a giant pit far bigger than I thought possible), there were a lot of things that worked extremely well.  And those other things led to dozens of great friendships, romances, projects ...  eventually compuserve and BBS communities ...  and managing my own online site in 1986 ...  eventually becoming obsessed with gardening in 1994 ... and learning of the word permaculture in 2001 and starting these forums in 2005.   And through all of that time great accomplishments and great faceplants.

By trying and trying and trying some more, a big group of us have built something that I think is really cool.  Yes, there has been a lot of pain recently, but there has also been a lot of people stepping up to solve problems, share a kind word, say the nice thing, be lovely, be helpful, and build a better world through a smile, a bit of joy, a cookie, a joke, a suggestion, a gift, and the magic words "thanks, that helped me a lot. You're fucking awesome."

Thanks to all of the permies.com staff.   Thanks to the boots in the bootcamp.  Thanks to all of the people chipping in for our next big project (the SKIP book).  Icky experiences become small and far away when you have a hundred cool friends carrying you to the next great adventure.   Thanks to the thousands of people that selflessly help people here on permies.   And, today, a really big thanks to the people that have taken a moment to say "thanks".  When it seems like you are drowning in crazy icky people, it is good to hear that there are a few people where everything worked fine and they are happy.